Field
The disclosure relates generally to electronic circuits, in particular, to apparatuses and methods for thermal mitigation.
Background
Increasingly, thermal management is becoming an issue in operating integrated circuits (ICs). For example, wireless communication technologies and devices (e.g., cellular phones, tablets, laptops, etc.) have grown in popularity and use over the past several years. These electronic apparatuses have grown in complexity and now commonly include multiple processors (e.g., baseband processor and application processor) and other resources that allow the users to execute complex and power intensive software applications (e.g., music players, web browsers, video streaming applications, etc.). To meet the increasing performance demand, these processors have increased in complexity and operate in frequencies in the gigahertz range. As a result, substantial heat may be produced while operating these processors.
The heat generated by the processors may adversely affect the performance and the reliability of the device. For example, the performance and reliability of an IC degrade when operating at high temperatures. Moreover, the heat generated by the wireless communication devices must be within a limit tolerated by the users. Thus, one design challenge is providing the thermal mitigation functions to manage the heat issue.